Indicia bearing plastic cards for personal identification purposes bearing individualized data such as medical information, name, address, and charge account number, for example, are well known. Usually, the card provides information embossed, typed, or printed on a 50.times.75 mm cardboard or plastic card. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,259,391, there are substantial disadvantages associated with the use of such cards. Depending on the form chosen, there is a great risk that there will be typing inaccuracies, the cost of equipment, material and labor is fairly high, and the risk of fraud great, yet only a small amount of information may usually be stored. Additionally, and more importantly, when a cardboard base or plastic card is employed, the resulting object is essentially opaque, and therefore reading by means of a microfilm viewer is impossible.
The improvement disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,259,391 consists of eliminating the cardboard base or plastic card and, instead, heat-sealing two frames of microfilm adjacent to each other between two sheets of transparent laminate so as to form a flatter, thinner, cheaper and transparent wallet-size card, substantially the same in size as a conventional credit card, which may be read with the naked eye in those portions using extremely large prints, and by means of a microfilm reader elsewhere. Such cards may be used to store credit information, security clearances, medical information, or any other type of data that may be too bulky to carry around in other than microfilm form, together with more general information such as the name and/or trademark, for example, of the named parties, an employer, an insurer, or a bank.